Holding Patterns
by xxSonnis
Summary: "Little did she know that the shadows of London received her homecoming. And the shadows, she would soon learn, had red eyes filled with knowing everything that she couldn't yet possibly fathom." Possible A X OC. Takes place after the events of the manga. Heavily inspired by the film Bram Stoker's Dracula.
1. Chapter 1 - Homecoming

_Howdy and hello! I think this is the first fanfiction I've written in nearly ten years. Isn't that crazy? XD I once wrote under the penname DaysOfTheNight, but since it's been such a long time, I decided to make a new account here._

 _This idea has been bouncing around my head for a really long time, and I'm finally putting fingers to keys. While the idea's been here, I'm winging much of this as I go along. Plus, I'm a little rusty. Bear with me. :) I hope you enjoy the reading as much as I enjoy the writing!_

~

The girl had always been the red rose left in a field of daisies. Growing up, she tried to accommodate others to her thorns, wilting herself down and curling her petals in to no avail. It was impossible, as even the sun is never truly hidden; the world instead turns away. She was just too different. Too true to her eccentricity, too aware of how much she didn't belong without knowing exactly why, and better at dancing to her own beat rather than tripping over the two-step of the status quo. She stopped trying when she got tired of failing, and when the girl became a young woman, she enjoyed herself too much to think of bleaching her wild colors ever again. The world would always turn away, but round about again to her confidence. If given the chance, there were still things she would change about herself. Her natural borne inclination towards whimsy, for example, doesn't have be synonymous with perpetually unprepared.

She could have brought an umbrella to England. American umbrellas work in Europe. But this American brain hardly worked in _America,_ much less a foreign land. So she walked from landmark to museum to monument (what was left, anyway, after the terrorist attack three decades ago) with a wet head and wetter eyes, because her whimsical nature walked hand-in-hand with a raging sensitivity. It was her destiny, coming to London, but she never knew until she got here. Even so, she knew she wasn't dumping her life savings on this class trip for nothing. Nothing is that simple. They say there's a method to madness, and she could believe it because there was a reason behind her every eccentricity. She came to London because standing outside her one o'clock religions class, staring at a bulletin board, that flyer for the summer semester art history class across the pond spoke to her. _It's time. Go. It's time._

It was that same voice that cajoled her into wearing corsets. The garment was outdated, unnecessary, and quite frankly, corsetry is widely misunderstood. Yet the routine of lacing in every morning was like second nature, like the corset was as a second skin. She could never put to words why, even to herself. It simply was. And now she was simply here, and the damp, chilled air of this country reached into her and brought wells of emotion she could barely parcel inside herself. A few fellow students who were assigned to the same study group had been giving her space without a second glance or thought, such was the reliability of her tears.

Despite this - being wet, cold, and regularly embarrassed by her inability to control herself - she was happy. She felt a calm connectedness that she could only liken to coming home. Yes, that was exactly it. She was coming home, and she wasn't sure what that meant yet.

Little did she know that the shadows of London received her homecoming. And the shadows, she would soon learn, had red eyes filled with knowing everything that she couldn't yet possibly fathom.


	2. Chapter 2 - Blood Bound

_Thank you to everyone who read/left a review last chapter! I appreciate you all! I've been having a blast writing, and I can't wait to start chapter three. We'll get a chance to learn more about the mystery girl from across the pond. ;) Enjoy!_

It had taken thirty years for phasing through walls to feel anything close to normal, but it would never be as easy as using the door. As much as she had come to embrace - even enjoy - her vampirism and all the quirks that came with it, Seras still savored the familiarity of human limitation. At this point, she had been dead longer than she had ever been alive, but she never wanted being a vampire to wholly define her. It had been some time, however, since Integra would let her enjoy the simple pleasure walking into her office.

Stepping through a wall was like diving headfirst into the pool. Imagining it that way had helped her move fluidly rather than bouncing off the wallpaper, or worse, becoming trapped in the plaster. She reclined her chin towards her chest and held her arms snug at her sides, an eyebrow twitching down in irritation as the memory of raucous French laughter echoed in her memory. Sometimes it seemed that Pip was harder on her than even Master ever was.

 _Au contraire,_ he purred in her mind, roused by her thoughts, _I simply-...eh...coached you._

"Coached me? Is that what you call bullying?" Seras muttered under her breath as her upper half materialized in the Hellsing leader's wide, open office. She flicked her gaze through her shaggy blonde hair to see Integra bent over the documents in front of her while tapping a pen against the edge of her desk. Pip fell silent, as he often did when she was working.

She always, always, always locked her office door nowadays. Seras stopped asking why months ago; the last living Hellsing got touchy about it. Sir Integra had always been stern, but it came in heated waves in her old age. Time made her patient, decades to bond had softened their relationship. But on a bad day? Asking about the locked door was accusatory to the aging woman's ears. Vampire or not, Seras didn't deliberately seek out Integra's wrath.

"Sir?" Seras prompted as her boots reached the ground with a gentle thud, rolling one shoulder to acclimate her body from phasing.

"Seras?" Sir Integra didn't bother looking over at her, her name more of a hum than a word. Behind her round glasses, Integra's eyes were cutting through words like knives through water. For all her talk about the Hellsing Organization bowing to government control, Integra wasn't delegating her responsibilities in the slightest. She was alive, and Hellsing was her's until she wasn't, and yet Seras wondered whether it was a good idea for Integra to begin slowly stepping down. It would be more than a tragedy when the world lost this huntress in a suit; it would be a madhouse here. Even with the late Sir Penwoods grandson to take the reins, there would always be those who would wish to steal them or delegate them elsewhere. But it wasn't something they talked about terribly much...then again, neither was the locked door. In any case, there were more pressing matters on Seras' mind.

Seras chewed on the edge of her lower lip briefly before wetting it for speech. She needed more than a quarter of Integra's attention. She wasn't bothering her with a trifle, and rather than beating around the bush, she spoke firmly to secure her mistress' ear.

"Sir, we have a problem."

Her eyes stopped and froze. Integra never glanced away from paperwork, but Seras could feel more than see Integra's attention shift. Instincutally, Seras tensed; urgency could make her nervous, even if she didn't fear anyone or anything.

"Kindly elaborate, then," the elder woman's voice crackled on a weary sigh. Fatigue and weakness are two different things, and the Hellsing leader didn't confuse the two the way she was apt to in her youth. She was a workaholic. There was no getting around that. As she was more patient with Seras, she had become more lenient of her own needs over time. She would soon retire. Seras could see the need in the flat darkness circling her eyes, which were at least as sharp and blue as the had ever been. "It's been a long day. I'm tired. This best be worth my time."

"Yes, of course, sir. The problem is kind of-...ehm. It's a problem inside of a problem."

Seras was met with a perfect deadpan.

The grandfather clock near the portrait of the previous Sir Hellsing ticked in impatience, the only sound keeping the room alive. After a beat, Seras' footsteps joined the rhythm, a thud on the ground for every tick the clock tocked, until she was leaning with palms face down on Integra's cluttered desk. When Integra narrowed her eyes, her glasses flashed, as if in acceptance of whatever challenge was dawning on them. It was nothing worse than they had faced before. That's what Sir Integra had said of every misfortune since the calamity of Millennium. It had always been true.

But this was unlike anything they could have expected.

"Alucard can't hear what I'm going to tell you," Seras inched her face further forward, her voice low enough now that it didn't echo in the outstandingly large room, "Because I'm not sure if it was his doing, or-..."

Tick. Tock. Integra blinked in a slow, measured way. Tick tock.

Seras heard that clock and almost believed she felt her own heartbeat in her ears, if only that were possible. Her palms slid, papers shuffling under her hands quietly. Without breaking their stare, Integra steadied the stack of reports she had been studying, long fingers splayed across the tiny type-print.

"Is anything broken? Is any _one_ broken?"

Unlike Seras, Integra made no effort to hush her words, and her iron tone reverberated around them. Seras cringed in response, averting her eyes after giving a firm shake of the head.

"No, it's nothing like that, but-..."

"...just spit it out, Seras. You're behaving like a child."

Seras reached up and rubbed her ear as if expecting it to be given a harsh tug, but when the pull never came, she brushed the back of her hair instead. She swallowed once, briefly closing her eyes, before opening them again to look at Integra with more solemnity. The light of the night was filling the grand office, shadows and moonlight catching the draculina's face, darkness instigating the devilish brightness of her red eyes.

While the eyes were filled with knowing, it was the mouth that told the tale.

* * *

He must have been away too long. It was long enough to addle his fledgling's brain. Or maybe it had simply been long enough to make him forget how stupidly naive she could be. Thirty years could change that, he would think. But Alucard was old enough to know without a doubt that there are some constants in this world. One of those constants is history. They say it repeats itself, which he supposed was true.

What no one fails to mention is that history might repeat, but the reactions don't have to remain unaltered.

He didn't need to eavesdrop on Seras and Integra to know what was going on. He had felt Seras' curiosity, then suspicion, and finally, outrage as she slowly uncovered a scandal on her daytime patrol. Her anxiety was so acute he felt that he could reach into her mind and use a finger to trace its path from this thought to the next, but she surprised him when the trail was suddenly too far out of his reach. The one danger of tapping into his fledgling's mind - one that he wasn't yet accustomed to - was that she was experienced enough to know when he was rummaging around.

Seras Victoria was never as stupid as she seemed. This was one of the most fatal things _he_ forgot. In thirty years, she had been practicing what he tried to teach. Still, she trusted him too much. He would reap the rewards of that.

He was out of the manor and off the Hellsing Organization grounds before Integra could shoot out of her chair and begin to pace. He imagined that she would smoke to steady her nerves. He also predicted that she wouldn't do anything to stop him. Not yet. Their relationship was different than before.

Upon his return from the ethers, she had fed him her blood as an homecoming present. A gift of freedom; a release from subordination, because much like Seras, Integra had always let her childhood affinity towards him soften her judgement somewhat. It was the second time he had tasted her, and the magic in her blood. That magic that bound him. That blood he was bound to...

...that blood he was bound to...

He passed through the shadows of London, the ebbs and corners of the city all much different than before, but he always felt at home in the darkness. It took mere moments for him to slip like liquid through the darkness to the blood he had been bound to long before the Hellsings. The world had looked different then.

But she had hardly changed.


	3. Chapter 3 - Game Changer

_Confession: I forgot that Integra only has one eye. I don't know if anyone caught my little oops last chapter, but I apologize nonetheless._

 _I wrote this chapter a lot faster than I thought I would, and we didn't quite get to know the mystery girl as much as I'd planned, but we will! Thank you again to readers and reviewers, you've been very sweet to me. You're the best!_

* * *

She had hardly changed.

Alucard slipped himself through the cracks of the glossy hotel room door, following the line of shadow in the unlit corner of the little room. He saw the little details in his periphery; basic decoration that was too pressed after wear from a multitude of boarders, the color scheme neutral and perhaps outdated, but he didn't know or care much about such things. His sights were set on the girl.

He could see now why Seras had known something was amiss. His Third Eye zoned in on the thin, blackish red line threaded into the human girl's aura that singled her out not just as someone touched with vampiric energy, but one imbued with his powerful essence. It wasn't strong enough to be sensed from afar, but now that he knew, it was undeniable. She came to him in his youth. She came to him to carry him into this new identity of Alucard. Now she has come again, which marked the beginning of an end. Or this time, was it to finish what they started?

Undetected, Alucard watched her as she sat on the edge of one of the two queen-sized beds, her back to him as she gazed out the balcony doors in a daydream. It felt like deja vu, as if he were living inside a memory. Thanks to the bastard feline hybrid he had consumed long ago, he was everywhere and nowhere. He could stretch himself across time, yet this moment managed to tumble him backwards out of his own accord to another time, another place.

Numerous times over, he had secretly watched her lounge in her boudoir. Then as now, she had been in nothing but her undergarments, corseted snugly in pristine, creamy satin, with a tantalizing dip in the waist just before the supple hill of the hip. The sunset peeking through the window bathed her bare shoulders with ethereal pink light. Her hair was long, but not as long as it had been in times past. It was brushed to one side, and he caught himself leaning in order to examine how it spread over her breast, the burnt earth color flowing freely and richly as the silk petticoat blanketing her legs. She had - _did_ \- look like a goddess to him, but it had surprisingly little to do with her beauty. She was Persephone, and he had been Hades, ready to steal her away to illuminate his darkness.

He did not need her. He had a master he served, his own servant who adored him, and a future that would be his very own for the first time in over two hundred years. Alucard was on the precipice of his renewed potential wherein no one could stop him. Yet she was here. She had not changed. The parts of him that had been infatuated with her had not changed, either. Nostalgia, familiarity, love be damned. He hadn't changed enough not to want what was out of his reach. Proof enough was how fast he was to see her without any concrete evidence that it was really _her._

His reverie was broken when she moved suddenly, her head turning to look behind her. Chin pressed to the front of her shoulder, the girl flicked hazel eyes from under a curtain of brunette bangs. For a moment, he wondered if she could see him. That was impossible, and he dismissed the thought before he could instinctively meld further into the shadows. Yet her stare penetrated his calm, and he felt himself wanting to stir.

 _Not like this. Never like this._

A moment after this thought, Alucard dissipated from the faded little hotel room. The girl blinked, wondering if it was just her, or did the room suddenly seem brighter than before?

* * *

Integra huffed out smoke before crushing the remainder of her cigar in one of the many ashtrays in her bedroom, bringing a bent index finger to her mouth to bite as she did. Her mind had been turning on itself for hours, and she felt the toll it took on her aging body. When did she get so old? It weighed down her bones, even if her mind wouldn't stop chugging at full speed. It made her feel crazy sometimes, these nights where everything felt like just too much. She found herself walking up to her door and shifting all the bolts locked to stem the flow, like an enemy to bar from her quarters. It was all in her mind, and there was no getting away from one's mind. Or one's life, for that matter. But she was old, and we all die eventually. It isn't to say she was suicidal; she was simply looking forward to sleeping for a long, long time one day.

God knows she got little enough as it was. Even less in the year Alucard had returned.

That fateful night he brought Seras Victoria home from Cheddar she had spent the whole dawn pacing in front of her desk, rage practically steaming out of her pores. He had watched her from across the room with a cat-like smile, a twinkling in his eyes that she couldn't hope to understand. Yet she couldn't ask him _why._ She couldn't ask him _anything._ She had been too angry to try and understand that massive betrayal, too fearful of what his ability to multiply without permission meant for the health of her control over him. It wasn't until later - when they nearly lost the poor girl after a surprise visit from Alexander Anderson - that she could find the care to pose the question.

 _Why did you turn that girl?_

And what did he say? _A sense of whimsy._

Integra paused, and with a snarl, turned to her night table to fetch another cigar. His whimsy was getting away from him, because one fledgling had apparently run across another. How many were there, exactly? Did he keep a harem of buxom draculinas to entertain his little _whimsies?_

 _"_ Wouldn't _that_ be delightful."

She had never re-accustomed herself to his sudden appearances. Seras at least addressed her when she phased into a room. Seras was courteous, loyal, and never stepped out of bounds when it was not in her master's best interest to do so. She reminded Integra somewhat of Walter before his fall from grace.

Alucard was simply-...Alucard. That meant surprises all the time and struggling to pretend they didn't take effect.

"Oh, shut up," she commanded on impulse, spinning sharply on a heel to face her servant and catching her balance on the corner of her nightstand. The lamp teetered, but Integra didn't stop to steady it.

Her single creased eye cut at the vampire as she moved a fresh smoke to the corner of her mouth with her lower lip effortlessly. His expression was too pleased with itself, with half-lidded eyes and lazy grin. His wide-brimmed red hat was missing, midnight locks spilling around his face with more grace than her mussed, unbrushed silver tresses. She scanned him, trying to detect something more than that mask he constantly wore. The effort was as futile as it had always been.

"Would you care to tell me the meaning behind what you've done?"

"There is no harem, Master. Only the one you've fabricated in your dreams."

"You know that's not what I'm talking about. Stop being an idiot and enlighten me, because I do _not_ take kindly to being left in the dark by anyone, much less you. You've turned another bloody girl behind my back. Explain that to me. Now."

Alucard's grin softened around the edges, his head taking on a bit of a tilt in a facade of innocence. Their stares fought one another, a beat of long, charged silence filling the void between her question and his answer.

"I don't think I owe you any explanations anymore."

Finally, Integra cinched her eye closed, plucking the cigar from her mouth to toss aside on her unused bed. An air of defeat filled her body, but she refused to release it. "I'm not dead yet, Alucard. I'm old, but not dead. Our agreement stands."

The agreement that a naive little girl and a monster made long, long ago that an old woman clung to in a last grapple for power. It's why her father, and his father before him strapped the monster in the basements far below so that he was dried up and rendered harmless. Alchemy could only last so long, and do so much. Rather than unleash a demon, she had sold him her blood. Alucard could have eaten her alive that fateful night when they rescued one another, but instead, he let her live. He could have slipped away before she knew how to leash him, but he chose to stay. The only explanation she had ever been able to muster was that like most things, it was entertaining to him, her life and the way she was forced to lead it. The joke reached new levels when she learned about the blood magic that had bound him to her ancestor, the great Van Helsing. The contract she proposed was like a game of chess to him, all moves for an extended period where he knew he would inevitably get the checkmate.

A lifetime of servitude for the guarantee he would taste her blood and release the annoyance and liability of restriction releases when the Hellsing line runs dry. That was the deal. She had acted outside the confines of that contract by hand feeding him, but-...

...but nothing. There are no excuses for foolishness, even if it was borne out of affection. Alucard hadn't held it against her. Not until now, it seemed.

"Our agreement stands," Integra repeated, her tone unwavering. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling only slightly embarrassed about the sagging breasts beneath her pajamas. She never had time to be vain, especially not now, not with him.

"Yes, yes it does," Alucard mused on a low purr, a letting his body rest against the wall to his left, hands finding the pockets of his trench coat. "But I owe you nothing, because there is nothing to be owed."

"You're saying-"

"-that there is no newborn vampire."

He finished her sentence with the slightest of nods to affirm the words. That's not to say that Integra believed a syllable.

"You're calling Seras a liar, then?"

"Not exactly. She could tell better lies. What I'm saying is that there is no other vampire; that there has been an honest mistake."

"And proof? Can you prove that?"

"Did she prove to you that it was true?"

Damn him. Integra felt heat rush to her head as the brutal embarrassment of her ill-preparedness hit her full force, making her forget any thought of her breasts altogether. She thought to keep her face from revealing her own shocked disappointment. What was this? She knew better than to confront him about this before investigating further. What could have gotten into her?

Sleep. She needed sleep. She was feeling crazy.

"Just get out," she groaned, swatting the cigar off her bed to rip the sheets back. "Get out. Let me sleep for an hour before we come back to this _with_ Seras. I-..."

When Integra glanced up, Alucard was gone from the room. She froze, glaring at the corner he once occupied, before lifting her glasses atop her head, flipping up her leather eyepatch, and rubbing her eyelids with the heels of her hands.

She better feel like herself after some sleep. If not, who knows what would become of them.


	4. Chapter 4 - The Hunt

The fog was infinitely more pleasant than the humidity in that nightclub. As she shoved her way out the crowded entryway, she caught herself on a lamp post and gratefully took in the fresh, albeit damp air.

It wasn't that she didn't like going out. That would make her a hermit long before her time. She was young, but old enough that the world was her oyster. Going out on walks or to the movies? She enjoyed those activities. Going out also meant _going out_. At night. To clubs.

That was an activity she had _never_ enjoyed. But there she was, escorted by peer pressure to a zoo of sweating bodies crammed in too small of a room. A few people in her study group convinced her to come along, and she might have stayed firm in her resolve to hole herself in the hotel if Jeremy hadn't been one of those who asked her. When she introduced herself, he hadn't balked at her quirky name. Illuminata was a mouthful, and most people pitied her for it all too obviously. Jeremy hadn't said a word; he had just smiled, and it flew up to his eyes, radiating out from the sunlight caught in his hair. When Jeremy smiled, it was with his whole body, and she had felt so special to bask in the glow for even a split second.

Oh, she should have known he was just being nice. On the way to the club, he barely even looked at her, even though she shyly peeked at him what felt like every few seconds. How could she be disappointed? Illuminata was used to chemistry petering out on her.

She would have left before her eyes were over-dazzled by neon and strobe lights if she could have found the damn door sooner. She was grumpy enough to attempt to navigate the streets of London alone as a tourist who had exactly one day of experience getting around here.

Except she had never exactly felt like a tourist.

The dew of sweat on her face beaded at her upper lip, which she licked away while taking in her surroundings. London was exactly the way she remembered, buzzing with innovation and humming with tradition. Just the way it had always been. ...or-...the way she imagined it to have been. This was her first visit. Overcome by her own thoughts, she pressed a hand to her damp brow and huffed a soft, breathy laugh, which abruptly stopped when someone joined in.

Whipping her head to look behind her, she caught sight of a boy raking her body with hooded eyes, a lop-sided smile still open from chuckling. She fought a flinch; he looked way too young to be clubbing, much less looking at her like that.

Flushing red, she ducked her head and pushed off the lamppost she had been resting on, her kitten heels clopping hurriedly down the sidewalk in what she hoped was the direction of the hotel. That's what she kept telling herself: that she hoped this was right. It was only what felt like moments later that she proved herself wrong multiple times over, because she became desperately lost in the tangle of streets.

Nothing was where it should be. Biting her lip to keep it from quivering, she gently shouldered by a link-armed couple and helplessly searched for the nearest street sign.

 _Illuminata..._

Instead, she found her name. But from where?

 _Illu...minata..._

Her hurried, anxiety-driven pace chugged to a slow stop, leaving her frozen on the familiar unfamiliarity of the side street. Suddenly, she felt very alone, despite that the night was filled with life. She heard laughter, car horns, the breeze whistling through railways. London had it's own presence, it's own life, that encapsulated everything and everyone existing within. But she was already there, her tracks woven through the heart of the city from a day and a night of exploring. A city couldn't call a name. Not so literally. It could call her in every other way, but not that.

 _Illuminata..._

Yet there was her name again. The young woman's ears perked to catch the sound in the air, only to be disappointed and disturbed by the fact that it was no to be heard anywhere but her own mind. A wind tossed her hair left; she looked in that direction and saw a damp alleyway that the street lights couldn't quite touch.

She wasn't sure why she followed the wind, but she hadn't been sure of anything since setting foot on this continent. Yet it was as if she had done this all before, and it made her feel so-...so impenetrable. She had the distinct feeling she knew exactly what she was walking into whilist knowing...nothing. But she was only following her own thoughts. What could possibly happen?

* * *

"Illuminata..."

The name flowed warm over his tongue, soft and sweet and much too big for the timid lamb hearkening to his call, but he would expect nothing less. In any form she took, it was never her strength that attracted him. He remembered the shy, withdrawn princess and the humble, dewy-eyed school teacher. She had swept through the world as if her bones were made of glass, but all that glimmers is not glass; diamonds can't be shattered. The princess had been self-preserving, the school teacher a force beyond her time. Tender in temperament, courageous in spirit. How polished diamonds are when brought to the fire in her eyes.

He would see it one last time. As Alucard had thought previously, history repeats itself, but his response didn't have to remain the same.

She was his personal sunrise. Her presence saw too many endings, as much as he couldn't help but bask in her light. The No Life King wasn't a moth to be drawn to the flame. That was a role for the humans. No matter the vampiric energy that existed inside that girl, she was human, and he was luring in her before she could spin her own web. Under different circumstances, he might not have to crush her so quickly, but Integra was still astute enough to smell trouble when his meddlesome fledgling wafted it her way.

Two hundred years. He had waited two hundred years and more to walk the night of his own provocation. An unassuming human woman would be the _last_ thing to ruin his total liberation, even if Integra - a very assuming human woman - had been the gateway to that freedom. This Illuminata? She was a threat. Alucard had always done more than obliterate threats.

He consumed them.

A grinning, triumphant expression melted over his face when the Illuminata's silhouette appeared, drawing closer and closer to the heart of darkness within the alley. If there was more time, he might have played with her a bit. He so would have liked to see her flesh bathed in moonlight before biting into it. He felt his body curdle in hungry anticipation. How supple she would taste.

Droplets falling onto the ground from the rooftops kept tempo to the song of her vitality, the ocean-like hush of breath and beat of the heart. Cautious, Illuminata halted quite a few feet from him, eyes wide as they blindly searched the darkness. He could see her perfectly, of course. In passing, Alucard thought it was a pity that she wasted such a lovely ivory dress to die in. The clothes would stain...but that would make them a brilliant shade of red, wouldn't it? As enchanting as she was to see again, he was too distracted by the hunt to care. Alucard's nostril's flared to catch more of her scent. Yes, supple. Pure. Easy prey, but also easy on the palette.

"Yes," he hissed quietly, delighting in her startled gasp when he finally spoke. In a movement too quick for humans eyes to trace, Alucard shot himself out of hiding and thrust himself at Illuminata, trapping her between a wall and his body. His gloved hands took her wrists prisoner, so no matter how much she would writhe and scream, she couldn't escape him. Writhe she did, however futile. Screaming she tried, but he capped her mouth with his own to muffle the noise. This kiss served a purpose, but he would be lying if he didn't admit how tantalizing it was. The warmth of her body seeped through his clothes and saturated his lips, and he ached for wanting to just _bathe_ in it.

"Shhhh," Alucard soothed as he withdrew his mouth, his closed eyelids further relaxing as he savored her bodyheat. Perhaps he could afford time to dawdle and play with her...just a little. Alucard stretched her arms out to either side, so that Illuminata was pinned like a butterfly whose wings had been nailed down. Beautiful, fragile, and oh so tantalizingly warm. She had even stopped struggling against him, which was hardly interesting, but it had been so long since he truly hunted that the visceral feeling was more important than the entertainment.

Alucard steadied a half-lidded gaze down on her, expecting her fear to be laid out for his delectation. Her lips swelled scarlet from the pressure of their forced kiss, her chest rising and falling rapidly against his own with her rapid breathing. Her pulse thrummed, and he could practically smell the adrenaline she produced.

Yet her eyes met his steadily, and the longer they looked at one another, the less sharp with fright her own hazel became. Alucard squeezed hard at her wrists to evoke her fear, but he only earned a wincing smile.

"You," she spoke in a trembling whisper, "You-...I-...I know you, and this-...I know this isn't _you_."

If Alucard could drop this moment on the ground, it's shatter would be as deafening as immense.

Her heart was practically beating in his hands, but it wasn't his. Suddenly, this wasn't enough. It was the first time it was never _enough_. The reality of that was so disturbing that Alucard was rendered silent and frozen, staring down at Illuminata with an unintelligible expression.

"I don't think you're going to hurt me," she told him this, and he picked up the slight question in her tone.

"MASTER! Stop!"

There was no time to say or do anything to answer that question.

" _You_ ," Alucard growled in his lowest, most enraged registers as a blonde-headed blur crashed into his body. Released not a second too late, Illuminata didn't wait to hear the slam and scuff of bodies hitting the ground before she took off in a messy sprint for the street.

Someone blocked her path before she could escape the mouth of the alley. A older, one-eyed woman with silver hair who had a smile so contained that it filled her with fear all over again. Despite how creepily controlled the woman was, she might have made it back to the hotel if a gun wasn't discreetly shown to to her from the inside of a gray wool trenchcoat.

"You've been cordially invited for an extended stay at the Hellsing Organization. Don't bother refusing; that wasn't a request. I was simply being polite."

* * *

 _Hey, all! :)_

 _I chose the name Illuminata for a couple reasons. Firstly, I think it's beautiful. More than that, it's fitting for her because it starts with " Ill " (after Illona, which I believe is associated with Vlad Tepes' second wife) and has " mina " in the middle (for Mina Harker, of course)._

 _Thanks for reading!_


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